VIFF | DAY TWELVE

By only

Monday October 8, 2007

ONLY PICK: Operation Filmmaker
It would seem to be a relatively impossible task to produce a film that is capable of encapsulating some of the most dominant themes in movies today but Nina Davenport has done just that. A film about a film, a documentary about Iraq and a exploration of the culture chasm between the Middle East and the West. Her almost accidental movie begins when a young Iraqi film student named Muthana Mohmed, after appearing on MTV in 2003, is invited by actor/director Liev Schreiber to come to Prague to help work on his film Everything is Illuminated. But what was intended as a act of charitable compassion soon becomes a complicated cultural quagmire as Muthana is perceived to be less grateful than expected. Things get increasingly tense as the support of cast and crew dissipates and Muthana’s visa is set to expire. Davenport begins this project with the simple intention of documenting a brief, feel good encounter but ends up inextricably linked to her subject in a film that captures the bitter and frustrating realities that exist in the spaces between expectation and resentment, charity and chaos.—AOT


01:00 pm GR7 – American Venus
07:15 pm GR6 – The Big Sellout
09:00 pm PCP – Cloud Seeding (Canadian shorts)
09:30 pm GR2 – Operation Filmmaker


_{Location Guide: GR1,2,3,4,5,6,7=Granville 7 | VCT=Vancity Theatre | PCP=Pacific Cinematheque | RID=Ridge}